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Become a chess champion : learn the basics from a pro / by Canty, James,III.; Lambert, Brian(Illustrator); St. Martin's Press.;
Kids will learn how to master the basics of the classic board game in this fun beginner's guide from professional chess player James Canty III. Become a Chess Champion is structured like a chess course, with knowledge carefully introduced as readers turn the pages -- assisted by hilarious chess pieces illustrated by Brian Lambert. The emphasis is on fun: James Canty III uses mini games and chess puzzles to teach important concepts and avoid overwhelming beginners. Kids will learn key skills like how to play the perfect opening and trick their opponents to bring about checkmate. By the end of the book readers should be able to confidently take on their parents, guardians or grandparents in a competitive game of chess! Become a Chess Champion also introduces kids to the wonderful world of chess. They'll meet the chess player who didn't lose a game for 30 years, the priest who invented the folding chess board, and the astronauts on the International Space station who had a chess match with people back on Earth! As well as being great fun, chess also helps kids develop key skills such as strategising, patience, and logic, and helps them excel in school subjects such as mathematics.
Subjects: Illustrated works.; Chess;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Island witch / by Jayatissa, Amanda,author.;
"Being the daughter of the village Capuwa, or demon-priest, Amara is used to keeping mostly to herself. Influenced by the new religious practices brought in by the British Colonizers, the villagers who once respected her father's craft have turned on the family. Yet, they all still seem to call on him whenever supernatural disturbances arise. Now someone-or something-is viciously seizing upon men in the jungle. But instead of enlisting Amara's father's help, the villages have accused him of carrying out the attacks himself. As she tries to clear her father's name, Amara finds herself haunted by dreams that eerily predict the dark forces on her island. And she can't shake the feeling that it's all connected to the night she was recovering from a strange illness, and woke up, scared and confused, to hear her mother's frantic cries: No one can find out what happened. Lush, otherworldly, and recalling horror classics like Carrie and The Exorcist, Island Witch is a deliciously creepy and darkly feminist tale about the horrors of moral panic, the violent space between girlhood and adulthood, and what happens when female rage is finally unleashed."--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Gothic fiction.; Novels.; Demonology; Dreams; Fathers and daughters; Villages; Witchcraft; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Phosphorescence : a memoir of finding joy when the world goes dark / by Baird, Julia(Julia Woodlands),author.;
Includes bibliographical references."After surviving a difficult heartbreak and battle with cancer, Julia Baird began to explore how she and others persevere through the most challenging circumstances life throws at us. She asks: when our world goes dark, when we are overwhelmed by illness or heartbreak, loss or pain, tragedy outside our control, how do we survive, stay alive and even bloom? She went in search of "the magic that will sustain us and fuel the light within - our own phosphorescence ". Phosphorescence can be found in nature - in glow worms, fireflies, flashlight fish, bioluminescent oceans; it is a phenomenon that allows creatures to give off light amidst darkness. Baird writes about the things that lit her way through the darkness: a connection to nature, friendships, her faith, experiencing awe, and other habits that changed her life. She also goes in search of how others nurture their inner light, interviewing the founder of the modern forest therapy movement in Tokyo, a jellyfish scientist in Tasmania, and a tattooed priest from Colorado, among others. Weaving together candid memoir with research and reflections on nature, Baird inspires readers to embrace new habits and adopt a phosphorescent outlook on life, to illuminate our days even in the darkest times"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Baird, Julia (Julia Woodlands); Hope.; Ovaries; Philosophy of nature.; Phosphorescence.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The last checkmate : a novel / by Saab, Gabriella,author.;
Maria Florkowska is many things: daughter, avid chess player, and, as a member of the Polish underground resistance in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, a young woman brave beyond her years. Captured by the Gestapo, she is imprisoned in Auschwitz, but while her family is sent to their deaths, she is spared. Realizing her ability to play chess, the sadistic camp deputy, Karl Fritzsch, decides to use her as a chess opponent to entertain the camp guards. However, once he tires of exploiting her skills, he has every intention of killing her. Befriended by a Catholic priest, Maria attempts to overcome her grief, vows to avenge the murder of her family, and plays for her life. For four grueling years, her strategy is simple: Live. Fight. Survive. By cleverly provoking Fritzsch's volatile nature in front of his superiors, Maria intends to orchestrate his downfall. Only then will she have a chance to evade the fate awaiting her and see him punished for his wickedness. As she carries out her plan and the war nears its end, she challenges her former nemesis to one final game, certain to end in life or death, in failure or justice. If Maria can bear to face Fritzsch--and her past--one last time.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Auschwitz (Concentration camp); Chess; Political prisoners; Revenge; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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Killing Commendatore / by Murakami, Haruki,1949-author.; Goossen, Theodore William,1948-translator.; Gabriel, Philip,1953-translator.; translation of:Murakami, Haruki,1949-Kishidancho goroshi.English.;
"A publishing event: a major new, epic novel from the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of 1Q84 and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. An unnamed thirty-something portrait painter, abandoned by his wife, becomes caretaker of the home of an aging famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When the younger man discovers an unknown painting in the attic, entitled "Killing Commendatore"--a painting that takes its cues from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni--he also discovers clues about Amada, his family and their involvement in a violent and failed plot to kill a Nazi leader in Vienna. As the painter slowly learns the truth, he is equally consumed by the story of a wealthy and mysterious neighbor, Menshiki, in what is, according to the author, a clear homage to The Great Gatsby. The painter becomes obsessed with Menshiki's doomed love affair, the young girl who might be his child and a stone-lined underground space in the nearby woods where Buddhist priests were once buried alive. This pit becomes a portal into another world, a surreal place where the figures from "Killing Commendatore" take form to guide our narrator on an epic journey. Ambitious and haunting, tactile and surreal, preoccupied with questions about trauma, art and the creative process, Killing Commendatore moves between the known world and a complex underworld."--
Subjects: Psychological fiction.; Portrait painters; Painting, Japanese;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
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Paying the land [graphic novel] / by Sacco, Joe,author,artist.;
"The Dene have lived in the vast Mackenzie River Valley since time immemorial, by their account. To the Dene, the land owns them, not the other way around, and it is central to their livelihood and very way of being. But the subarctic Canadian Northwest Territories are home to valuable resources, including oil, gas, and diamonds. With mining came jobs and investment, but also road-building, pipelines, and toxic waste, which scarred the landscape, and alcohol, drugs, and debt, which deformed a way of life. In Paying the Land, Joe Sacco travels the frozen North to reveal a people in conflict over the costs and benefits of development. The mining boom is only the latest assault on indigenous culture: Sacco recounts the shattering impact of a residential school system that aimed to "remove the Indian from the child"; the destructive process that drove the Dene from the bush into settlements and turned them into wage laborers; the government land claims stacked against the Dene Nation; and their uphill efforts to revive a wounded culture. Against a vast and gorgeous landscape that dwarfs all human scale, Paying the Land lends an ear to trappers and chiefs, activists and priests, to tell a sweeping story about money, dependency, loss, and culture-recounted in stunning visual detail by one of the greatest cartoonists alive"--
Subjects: Graphic novels.; Nonfiction comics.; Social issue comics.; Denesuline; First Nations, Treatment of;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The half king / by Landers, Melissa,author.;
"The Great Betrayal changed everything for the Allied Realm. Long ago, the kingdom's noble houses rose up against the goddess ... and for their treachery, the firstborn of each noble family was cursed. One with perilous beauty. One with destructive knowledge. One with insatiable bloodlust. But the royal house Mortara received the worst affliction of all. For while the king exists during the day, he fades into nothingness at night ... until his twenty-first birthday, when he will be lost to the shadows forever. Now an acolyte has arrived at court. Like all the second-born children of the Allied Realm, she's destined to serve the goddess and become a Seer ... only Cerise Solon has no gift of foretelling. In fact, she has no magical gift at all. Instead, she's surrounded by courtiers and priests--smiling sycophants whose hearts are filled with secrets and lies. And at the center of it all sits His Majesty Kian Hannibal Mortara, with his haunting eyes, sharp tongue, and an unerring ability to send her pulse skittering at the worst possible moments. Falling for him is unthinkable. Because the king is the last of his line, and as the specter of his twenty-first birthday--and the full force of his curse--approaches, the kingdom holds its breath. But there's only one way to save a dying king ... and it lies with the one person who's hiding the biggest secret of all. Cerise."--
Subjects: Fantasy fiction.; Novels.; Blessing and cursing; Courts and courtiers; Imaginary places; Kings and rulers; Man-woman relationships; Secrecy;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
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Endeavour : the ship that changed the world / by Moore, Peter,1983-author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 357-363) and index.An unprecedented history of the storied ship that Darwin said helped add a hemisphere to the civilized world. The Enlightenment was an age of endeavors, with Britain consumed by the impulse for grand projects undertaken at speed. Endeavour was also the name given to a collier bought by the Royal Navy in 1768. It was a commonplace coal-carrying vessel that no one could have guessed would go on to become the most significant ship in the chronicle of British exploration. The first history of its kind, Peter Moore's Endeavour: The Ship That Changed the World is a revealing and comprehensive account of the storied ship's role in shaping the Western world. Endeavour famously carried James Cook on his first major voyage, charting for the first time New Zealand and the eastern coast of Australia. Yet it was a ship with many lives: During the battles for control of New York in 1776, she witnessed the bloody birth of the republic. As well as carrying botanists, a Polynesian priest, and the remains of the first kangaroo to arrive in Britain, she transported Newcastle coal and Hessian soldiers. NASA ultimately named a space shuttle in her honor. But to others she would be a toxic symbol of imperialism. Through careful research, Moore tells the story of one of history's most important sailing ships, and in turn shines new light on the ambition and consequences of the Age of Enlightenment.
Subjects: Cook, James, 1728-1779.; Great Britain. Royal Navy; Endeavour (Ship); Navigation;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The house of last resort : a novel / by Golden, Christopher,author.;
"Across Italy there are many half-empty towns, nearly abandoned by those who migrate to the coast or to cities. The beautiful, crumbling hilltop town of Becchina is among them, but its mayor has taken drastic measures to rebuild - selling abandoned homesto anyone in the world for a single Euro, as long as the buyer promises to live there for at least five years. It's a no-brainer for American couple Tommy and Kate Puglisi. Both work remotely, and Becchina is the home of Tommy's grandparents, his closestliving relatives. It feels like a romantic adventure, an opportunity the young couple would be crazy not to seize. But from the moment they move in, they both feel a shadow has fallen on them. Tommy's grandmother is furious, even a little frightened, whenshe realizes which house they've bought. There are rooms in an annex at the back of the house that they didn't know were there. The place makes strange noises at night, locked doors are suddenly open, and when they go to a family gathering, they're certain people are whispering about them, and about their house, which one neighbor refers to as The House of Last Resort. Soon, they learn that the home was owned for generations by the Church, but the real secret, and the true dread, is unlocked when they finally learn what the priests were doing in this house for all those long years ... and how many people died in the strange chapel inside. While down in the catacombs beneath Becchina ... something stirs"--
Subjects: Horror fiction.; Novels.; Americans; Dwellings; Haunted houses;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Walking with ghosts : a memoir / by Byrne, Gabriel,1950-author.;
"As a young boy growing up in the outskirts of Dublin, Gabriel Byrne sought refuge in a world of imagination among the fields and hills near his home, at the edge of a rapidly encroaching city. Born to working-class parents and the eldest of six children, he harbored a childhood desire to become a priest. When he was eleven years old, Byrne found himself crossing the Irish Sea to join a seminary in England. Four years later, Byrne had been expelled and he quickly returned to his native city. There he took odd jobs as a messenger boy and a factory laborer to get by. In his spare time, he visited the cinema where he could be alone and yet part of a crowd. It was here that he could begin to imagine a life beyond the grey world of sixties Ireland. He reveled in the theater and poetry of Dublin's streets, populated by characters as eccentric and remarkable as any in fiction, those who spin a yarn with acuity and wit. It was a friend who suggested Byrne join an amateur drama group, a decision that would change his life forever and launch him on an extraordinary forty-year career in film and theater. Moving between sensual recollection of childhood in a now almost vanished Ireland and reflections on stardom in Hollywood and Broadway, Byrne also courageously recounts his battle with addiction and the ambivalence of fame. Walking with Ghosts is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking as well as a lyrical homage to the people and landscapes that ultimately shape our destinies"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Byrne, Gabriel, 1950-; Actors;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Results 91 to 100 of 117 | « previous |